Usage

Gay meaning ‘homosexual’ became established in the 1960s as the term preferred by homosexual men to describe themselves. It is now the standard accepted term throughout the English-speaking world. As a result, the centuries-old other senses of gay meaning either ‘carefree’ or ‘bright and showy’ have more or lessdropped out of natural use. The word gay cannot be readily used today in these older senses without arousing a sense of double entendre, despite concerted attempts by some to keep them alive.Gay in its modern sense typically refers to men (lesbian being the standard term for homosexual women) but in some contexts it can be used of both men and women.

Origin

In its original sense of ‘light-hearted and carefree, exuberantly cheerful’, gay goes back to the 14th century and derives from Old French gai. By the 17th century the meaning had extended to ‘addicted to social pleasures’, often with an implication of loose morality, as in, for example, the expression gay dog (a man fond of revelry), or these lines from William Cowper's poem ‘To a Young Lady’ ( 1782): ‘Silent and chaste she steal along / Far from the world's gay busy throng’. In slang use the word could describe a prostitute. The use of gay to mean ‘homosexual’, now the main meaning, is unambiguously found in examples from the 1930s, though there is evidence that it may have been used in this sense earlier.